Generally Speaking...

Swaptree

2008-12-11T18:30:00.002-06:00

I have a new online best friend: swaptree. I have been using this gem for several months to trade DVDs, books, video games, and music that we no longer want for items that we do want. It's simple to get started, even simpler to start trading, and swaptree uses an algorithm to figure out that you can send an item to Person A, they send an item to Person B, and Person B sends an item you'd like, to you. You have the option to print a shipping label right from the site once a trade has been accepted by all parties, or you can take care of the shipping on your own. If you ship through the site, they track it and charge your credit card once for all shipments made in a month, making it a simple and seamless experience.

Like most social sites, you can rate other members you have traded with and there are groups you can join if you're looking for specific things or have similar interests. But when recently adding some DVDs and Wii games to our "have" list, I found a couple neat features. Swaptree will note high end items like DVDs and video games so that other members can only initiate the trade with an item of comparable value. You have the option to initiate the trade of your high end item for a low end item, so "mixed value" trades are not off limits, swaptree just tries to keep things fair. You can also add things from your Amazon wish list to your swaptree want list or be notified that you can get something for free by swapping while browsing through the following sites:

Amazon.com
BarnesandNoble.com
Half.com
Alibris.com
booksamillion.com
abebooks.com
buy.com
Powells.com

They also have the obligatory Facebook hook along with some other cool ways of updating your want list from existing lists or sites en mass. I find the interface cleaner than Craigslist, and I like that I can get rid of media I no longer want and receive things I've been waiting for by using good old fashioned trading to help decrease manufacturing more of the same and landfill waste.

So if you're looking to clear out some media that you don't need or want anymore, but would like something in return, give swaptree a try and enjoy the ease of swapping across the US (other countries to be added soon).

[image from swaptree.com]

Tools for Planning User Interaction Research

2008-11-02T12:51:00.000-06:00

I'm over half way done with my HCI class now and I have been trying to come up with solid topics to update you like I promised. The class has been very informative in my opinion, so I was frustrated when I couldn't find the words to express what I have learned so far. I think this is because HCI is part common sense, although not always obvious, part art of presentation, and part analysis, and while I'm learning about each, I don't have enough experience to pull everything together. I'll get there.

What I have finally found is support for determining how to test if a project is on the right track for users. My class spent a significant amount of time learning about task analysis and prototyping, but our readings amounted to details of each tool or process we could use. What I have wanted ever since is a chart or map to tell me which one I should use at what point in the development process and what information I can expect to gain from each, and now I have finally found exactly what I want!

Adaptive Path's blog had a post that linked to a writeup on user experience research methods which gives great descriptions about the categories of methods and when to use each. Most importantly though, there are charts!

The first is a graph that plots methods based on data source, approach, and also shows through which context users will experience the product. I love this because I can easily see what techniques we use now, where they fall on the chart, and what other methods we may want to use to balance the information we get.

The second is a graph based off of the first that tells what questions methods will answer based on their plot point of the first graph. This will make it so easy to figure out which method to use based on our situation or a problem we are trying to solve.

The last chart ties in the "when" factor. Different methods are used at different parts of development and this chart makes it simple to reference throughout the phase.

I have posted the charts in the order they are described in the referenced document, but now that I have read through the explanations, I will probably use them in a different order. Of course each can be used individually, but in most cases I see my self starting with the second one to find a method to answer a question. I imagine I will then reference the first to see what tools we are already using in those categories or get ideas for new methods. I imagine the third chart would be most useful for planning out user testing that will be done for a project. This way we can gather important input at key points in the process as well as plan for them upfront.

I can't say that the user input we get at work will drastically increase, but at least now we have tools to be prepared and back up the need with what information we can gain and how the company will benefit from it. Here's to displaying information in an easy way to digest!

Human Computer Interaction

2008-08-29T10:59:00.002-05:00

This week I started my first Human Computer Interaction (HCI) course through Iowa State's distance education programs. The course is actually a psych class called "The Cognitive Psychology of HCI". This is my test to see how working and going to school mesh for me and to see if I'm interested enough in the area to complete a graduate certificate or full degree.

I have decided to post interesting things I learn to spread the news. The class is based around distance collaboration, so we have a wiki with personal information that will also be used for our team project. We also use a discussion board so that off-campus students like me can participate. One of the "open forum" posts by a student included a link to the site of a Mozilla developer about usability deemed the 10 Commandments of Usability. It's all good, but some quotes I particularly enjoyed are

"Users aren’t dumb. They just have better things to do with their lives than memorizing the internal data model of our screwy software."
"The job of the UI designer is to provide what the users need, not what the users say they need."
"The science of design can tell us that interface foo is X% more efficient than interface bar, but bar is Y% more learnable than foo. Choosing between foo and bar — that’s where the science ends and the art begins."
"When we blame the user, we teach them that technology is perfect and that the errors are their own. Because technology is hard to use, we are teaching a generation to be afraid of technology. We are teaching a generation to believe in their own stupidity. This is a sin, too."

Wall-E

2008-07-02T13:01:00.002-05:00

We stopped to visit some friends from college at the start of our vacation and caught the last showing of Wall-E Friday night. I love Pixar movies and haven't been disappointed yet. This one was no exception.

I love how Pixar can personify objects and animals so well. It's amazing how they can evoke feelings about cars and create robots with emotions. I also loved how the Mac start up sound was used when Wall-E rebooted! I wonder how much that cost them.

The other thing I loved is how Pixar throws up mirrors (not literally) so that we can take a nice long look at ourselves during the movie. If you have seen the previews then you know that the story is based on humans ruining Earth with garbage and pollution. The the real kicker for me is how they show our race over 700 years after they left. I won't spoil it if you haven't seen it yet, but I do applaud Pixar for making a statement in their entertaining way. Unfortunately, the people who most need to see it probably won't or they won't understand the relevance outside of the theater.

I guess this is my official plug for Wall-E. See it to be entertained, see it to think, see it to love Pixar and their awesome productions.

Chance to Start Again

2008-06-15T17:52:00.003-05:00

Cedar Rapids, IA, where I live, has currently been hit hard with unprecedented flooding. Fortunately, my house has not been affected. My company's office building, however, has had an estimated 5' of water on the ground floor in its downtown location. Our local and national news has been showing many pictures of the downtown Cedar Rapids area and it is an understatement to say that the downtown has a massive clean up ahead.

With this tragedy is the opportunity for a glorious rebirth. Our city officials have been making plans to improve the downtown area anyway, and now we have been offered the option to show how we can come back and improve upon what the downtown once was. Starting July 1st I will be a member of the Corridor MPO (Metropolitan Planning Organization), and I hope to post some ideas I have that are more specific to that, but right now I wanted to highlight the importance of the Cedar Rapids Downtown Rebirth, CRDR, I just made that up, but it kind of has a nice ring to it.

The city should continue with plans for revitalizing the downtown, with the one addition of protecting the area so individuals and businesses will stay and more will come. Dubuque built a wall along the Mississippi and it definitely saved them this time (and it's gorgeous). We may never know how high is high enough, but I would vote that using this year as a reference point would be a safe bet.
Encourage businesses to stay downtown. I have several selfish reasons for this, but a lot of them are reasons that the others in the city have too. I love riding the bus or biking to work. I love that restaurants are starting to succeed and stay downtown so I can walk to lunch. I love that the YMCA is right down the street. If my company moves to a non-downtown location, I see that as losing a huge benefit of working there.
The location makes the city cohesive. If we lose our downtown, then the center of the city dies and we lose the connections between the sides of town.
The downtown is home to people and many businesses. If they leave then it could be hard to retain them in the community in general. This may be a reason for some to move out and start fresh somewhere else like several of the Katrina victims tried to do when they moved to CR.

These are only some of the reasons that I have thought of and discussed while watching the news. Many of these stem from my personal stake in the issue, so other views are welcome. I don't have the high power to make everything happen, but that hasn't stopped me from trying before. Our downtown does affect our city as a whole and I want to see our city improve its status to become the best that it really can be.

Google Docs and Blogger Work Together

2008-03-19T19:13:00.001-05:00

I noticed a while ago that Google Docs had new features. They have several more announcements now, but I'm talking about way back when they added the ability to publish to your blog. They currently support Blogger, BlogHarbor, BlogWare, LiveJournal, SquareSpace, WordPress, and any site that uses the Blogger, MetaWeblog, or MovaleType API. I use Blogger and have been fine with typing in the text area they provide, but this could be helpful if you publish with several other people on a blog and don't want them to see your work in progress. In my case this would be more useful to hide how long it can take me to finish a post that I start. So I finally tested this feature out on a recent post to a green blog that I contribute to. It's nothing fantastic, but it worked. I do have two complaints. The first is that the settings ask if you would like to include the document title when posting (if possible). I selected this option and expected that since I use Blogger, this would be possible. Apparently not. Hopefully this will change, but it is annoying for now. The second gripe I have is adding tags to your post. This was also mentioned during the publishing process, but there wasn't a way to add them without going in to Blogger and editing the post. I'm trying this method once more with this post, but I think I'll stick with Blogger until they make a more compelling reason to switch.

Power Hour

2007-12-16T21:22:00.000-06:00

The joy of living in a four season location means that I always have variety. The weather even varies within a season which can be interesting, but also dangerous and annoying for some. Recently the Midwest has been hit with several winter storms including ice and what they call a "winter mix" which consists of ice, rain, sleet, and snow. The great part about this is that it is our first winter in a house (that we own) so we get to shovel, chop, and scrape. I'm not sick of it yet, but I will mention that we had ice an inch and a half thick on our driveway. We finally got it all off after three weeks thanks to some warm days.

So getting to the point of this post is the hazards of storms like the ones we have seen this year. Not only are the streets and sidewalks dangerous to drive and walk on, but the heavy ice and rain that freezes can cause power outages. We have been quite lucky and haven't lost power yet (knock on wood), but several of my relatives and co-workers have not been so fortunate. A few weeks ago we had a particularly crappy day weather-wise and very few people actually made it in to my work. I was able to make it in safely thanks to the awesome bus drivers here, but I kept an eye on the weather the whole time I was in. The tools that I used to keep up on the latest status included the following:

1) weather.com - the radar is pretty awesome and accurate. That day in particular was pretty scary seeing the long path of white (snow) and pink (mix/ice). The thing I really like about this map is that it moves with time so you can see where the storm is heading.

2) KCRG - This is our local news channel, not extremely helpful, but I can count on them listing announcements if things get really bad (read: "news worthy").

and finally,
3) Alliant's electrical outage summary - this doesn't say exactly where or which customers in each county are out of power, but if the count is particularly high in your area, it can alert you to the possibility of your house or business place being affected.

Also note that Ryan pointed out the "Report your outage" link at the bottom of the page. If you don't have electricity, how in the world are you going to have the ability to use that link? Just call it in yo!

So what other sites are useful in these situations?

The holy grail of Bluetooth mice

2007-11-24T18:01:00.000-06:00

This past year my loving husband decided to get me a Bluetooth mouse for my birthday. I work with Bluetooth every day, so it may be surprising that I didn't already have my own, but I guess I was just content to use his "unacceptable" castaways. I have grown to love my MacBook track pad (the pawing action is to die for), so I don't use a mouse with my laptop very often, and I certainly wouldn't travel with a mouse, at least I haven't crossed that line yet. These details put me in a more relaxed quest to find a Bluetooth mouse than my husband whom, I have found, is quite particular about his Bluetooth mouse preferences. Anyway, this birthday present "promise" happened in January, and, until Thanksgiving night, I still had not received the perfect mouse.

You may think that this ideal mouse would involve ergonomic design or perhaps the right amount of buttons or controls, oh no! My husband had two simple requests in a Bluetooth mouse:
1) It must be rechargeable. Who would want to have to replace batteries... ever?? Ok, I can agree with him here. Rechargeable is the cheaper and potentially more environmentally sound solution.
2) It must have an on/off switch. This is where I lost interest. My needs don't require an on/off switch. My use case would be to have a recharging station that would keep the mouse charged until I used it and all would be well. Since my husband travels with a mouse, he was looking for the additional benefit of turning the mouse completely off while it sits in his laptop case so that he doesn't have to carry extra cables just to charge a mouse. These exist as you can easily find Bluetooth mice with an on/off switch.

Now the obvious problem occurs when you combine these two requirements; rechargeable and on/off switch. His arguments were valid and the technical point of view was even in line. Being able to charge your mouse and then ensure that it was ready at a moments notice was ideal, and "it's only an on/off switch, that doesn't require much engineering". But I was more pessimistic. I countered that there would be very few users as picky as him and even though it may not be a lot of extra cost, what company would add a switch if they didn't have to?

Well I am proudly announcing today that I was proven wrong. After standing in line at CompUSA for the Thanksgiving night sales, bringing home my birthday present, opening it up to charge for me to use in the morning, and then excitedly realizing that this wonder of wonders Bluetooth mouse was not only rechargeable, but (gasp!) also had a power switch, my triumphant husband trucked back to CompUSA to fight with the morning crowd and buy one for himself. We now own two Microsoft Wireless Laser Mouse 8000s.

There may be others out there with these features since ours had no documentation on the box that proclaimed the power switch, but this was a story with a happy ending so far.

Picture This

2007-11-13T19:51:00.000-06:00

I was recently married and we have been "combining households". One of the things that we have a lot of are pictures. Digital ones are pretty easy. Most of them are already organized into folders and, given that we've only owned digital cameras for no more than the past 6 years, we can remember details to file random ones. The organization problems start with hard copies, especially hard copies that were given to me or are my husband's. These in particular tend to not have descriptions written on the back and therefore will someday be lost to the WTF? pile. Some of them we can remember the people, but not the location and here is where I would love to have a tool.

We have been able to search for information for many years . We can also search for images and videos now, but each of these searches is initiated by text. What I need is the ability to search via the image itself! How awesome would that be? Scan in and upload a picture to a search engine that could analyze the picture and at least tell you the location. "Did we take that picture in Colorado or Utah?" Even better would be an approximate date or information about the location. "When did Pepe's Pizza close? Sometime after this picture was taken, but what year?"

The algorithms and time needed for this go way beyond my patience, but I'm sure it will happen some day. I just hope I'm still around so I can finish categorizing our pictures!

You Decide

2007-04-11T18:02:00.000-05:00

So this "Global Warming" thing gets a lot of attention from both sides of the fence. There are those that believe we are a main cause for the climate changes and there are those who believe it's just part of Earth's natural cycle with or without us. I'm not going to debate that now because there is enough of that going on. What I am going to do is post several links to sites that have information about how to cut down on energy and ideas to improve our lives. This has become very important to me and once I move into my new house, I hope to make more positive choices. No matter what side of the fence you're on, this information can help save you money, if not give you a good feeling about your actions, and who doesn't like saving money?

A site that I found recently focuses on improving bicycling in communities throughout the United States. I like it because they have great resources for helping out cities and counties to create better environments and opportunities for biking. This encourages exercise, cuts down on car traffic, and can be positive advertising to people looking to move into the area. Not only do they focus on construction efforts, but they also suggest training traffic engineers, motorists, and bicyclists about mixed traffic with cars and bikes living in the street together. I'm hoping to get something like this going in Cedar Rapids.

The next area I have several bookmarks in is alternative energy. This is important because we all know that non-renewable resources are being depleted and we will have to find better ways to maintain our standard of living. Some links to sites I like include projects with wind and manure and solar. I was also impressed to hear that the US government is actively looking into nuclear energy plants and several plans for building them are on the way.

One way of dealing with CO2 that is growing in popularity is consumer carbon offsets. Here is an independent study done to compare the many carbon offset providers to help consumers understand what they are paying for more and encourage the programs to become transparent to provide the best solution for everyone. The provider that I have used so far is NativeEnergy. This type of program is used to help offset the amount of "unclean" energy you are using and usually put it towards "clean" energy projects. Most sites will also have a calculator to add up how much energy you spend.

And lastly for this post, if you're looking to get a new car here is the government's fuel economy site where you can find all sorts of information.

So you decide on what you believe and what you want to do, just do something.

Poof! Blog Reading

2007-04-09T17:54:00.000-05:00

Blogs have revolutionized the way we disperse information. Blogs can represent a personal diary, a list of tips, a way to publicize a cause, a means for companies to reach out to investors and a slew of other uses. I previously used Wizz RSS Reader to check on my favorite sites. I say previously because as of this past weekend I have started using Google Reader. There are lots of goodies so I'll try to talk about what I have noticed so far.

First of all appearances. If you like the look of GMail, then you'll like Google Reader. They fit together like they're in the same family as it should be. There is a "List View" which displays the blog entries just like emails show up in GMail and you can star entries just like emails. And if you like the backgrounds and themes of various blogs, you can open up a new tab or window to view a post from the original site by clicking the double arrows at the end of an entry.

You'll also notice the simple navigation on the left of the window. Choose how you want to sort posts, subscribe to blogs by adding the feed url or searching, view only updated blogs or all, and categorize your favorites. This portion was, for me, to be expected from Google, now on to the ooey gooeyness that made me want to switch.

First, I am a Google Homepage user and Google Reader has a widget that can be added and lets you see what new posts you have to read in a
glance. I don't have any new posts in the picture, but if I did they would be listed similar to emails in the GMail widget. This tidbit made it easy for me to try it out. What I really like about it is that I don't have to click on every blog feed link to see if there are new posts and I don't have to open up a new page either. I just open up my web browser and right there on my homepage it tells me if there are new items to read and what blog they're for. This also allows me to take my blog history with me. What I mean by this is that no matter what computer I'm on, Google Reader knows what posts I have already read and has them marked accordingly.

I have to say that my favorite part of Reader right now is the expanded view. This shows all of the posts in order so that you can scroll right from one to the next and the best part is that as you scroll past the posts, Reader marks them as read... niiice.

The auto marking may be my favorite right now, but there are several features that I'm excited to dig into more. Reader's settings even has a section called "Goodies" that several of these are in. One, like most web tools, is that you can read from your phone. The bookmark link is one that I haven't noticed anywhere else before. It allows you to bring up the next unread post by clicking a single bookmark. This would be a very simple way to move through new posts without even going to your homepage or navigating to Reader. I think I will continue to prefer seeing my new posts listed, but this is a cool idea. The next goodie listed is "subscribe as you surf". Simply, if you're chugging along popping through new blogs and find one that you want to add to Reader, you just click this bookmark and it gets added to the list. I'll definitely be using this one.

The last feature I'm going to mention is one that I'll also be using. It's the Share option. This can be seen in the left navigation area and it lets you share posts with friends, family, and the world. One thing some of my co-workers were discussing today was the lack of searching or saving in Reader. While this isn't the best solution, one thought I had was to share posts that had information I wanted to remember or use again, or posts that I wanted to save. This would make them easily available and "save" them for future reference. Again, not the best, but I think I'll give it a try when I'm playing around with this feature.

Work Jams

2006-11-29T18:35:00.000-06:00

You like music, right? I mean, who doesn't? Music is great in the car, at home, at a party, at a bbq, while shopping, while eating. It's great anytime! It is even great at work. The problem at work is that you have to play nice with your co-workers and not distract them, so you have to wear headphones of some sort so you don't interfere with their productivity. My main problem with headphones is that I don't want to know that I'm wearing them. I don't want to feel them over my ears, and I definintly don't want to remember they are on by a sudden jerk when I try to go past the cable's length. Of course you can use wireless headphones, but ideally I could just jam "out loud" so I didn't have to shell out money for a nice pair.

What I want is music piped throughout my work space. It would be awesome to have a daily playlist (and I don't mean like the radio) to work to. I want to share the musical experience with my cube neighbors and be energized or relaxed through my ears. I want to be able to stand up and take a dance break to a good beat without getting my head jerked back. Being open to all kinds of music, I'd also like to know what my co-workers like to listen to just to switch it up.

Taking it one step further into less realistic territory, an out-of-the-box corporate benefit would be to hire a private DJ for the company. I can't take credit for this idea, Ryan actually mentioned it first. It's a fun concept though, and it could be personalized by mixing employee favorites. Until then, or until I get wireless headphones, I'll be getting whiplash.

Poof! Bluetooth

2006-11-07T20:30:00.000-06:00

Bluetooth: useful technology with a lot of potential.
Problem: the average non-techy Joe is easily caught up in some of the hazy workings of Bluetooth (see the RadioShack commercial).

Scenario: you run out to fight with the shopping crowds to grab the great deals. You snatch some $9.99 Bluetooth headset/$100 Bluetooth headphones/$40 Bluetooth keyboard. You bring it home, open the packaging and attempt to read through the directions. They say to charge the device for 2 hours (damn impatience!). You watch the blue/green/red light as the energy flows. It's done! Then the instructions say hold down the big button, flip the doohicky up and down three times, and sing row, row, row your boat until a light blinks morris code in various colors. You make a mistake and sing Mary had a little lamb instead and you get an f-you beep from the device. You end up feeling like you just lost a game of Technology Twister. So you go through the steps again and sing the correct song: it's visible now! So you grab your laptop/cellphone/PDA and try to search for your new toy only to find out that the blue light doesn't mean that your laptop has Bluetooth/your cellphone doesn't support some A2DP thing (wtf?), and you have to type some magical passcode on both your keyboard and PDA and then hope that they dig each other just one of the times that you run through the steps.

Holy crap, you just wanted to get rid of a wire! Your new toy to help simplify your life has just given you the gift of a migraine and doubt that technology is really on our side.

Never fear young grasshopper! Bluetooth is not perfect, but not much is. Look at history, most technologies had their bumps in the beginning and the ones that got it together moved past that. The Bluetooth SIG has been working hard at improving the user experience including icons (again, not a perfect solution in my opinion, but a step), and working on simple pairing techniques.

In my opinion, the simple pairing would make the experience worlds better. Imagine not having to know anything about Bluetooth, nothing about profiles, not having to push and hold and wait, and blink, but instead taking your new, exciting toy, turning it on, and with maybe a simple push or touch, Poof! Bluetooth. *Sigh* what a wonderful world it would be. Until then, practice your right hand on red button twister move.

Poof! Skills

2006-10-17T21:11:00.000-05:00

Have you ever wished you could just snap your fingers and gain knowledge or skills for something? Well this evening I had a similar experience, but from a different perspective. I had the pleasure of going to my cousin's elementary school orchestra concert... ouch my ears. Honestly, it was better than I expected, but I still had the urge to be able to wave my hands and magically make them sounds less painful.

I can distantly relate it to times when I've stood witness to someone doing something for the first time, and see them struggle like a child learning to walk. I know I can't just do it for them, they have to learn, but there is still that urge deep down inside that just wants to at least show them how easy it will be once they learn it.

Another example is my mom and ebay. She's used ebay to buy things several times and now she wants to start selling things. I haven't actually done this myself, but I know it isn't that hard. However, she has herself convinced that it will be complicated and that makes it sort of scary, as in right before you jump into a pool and find out if it's cold or not. She has even bugged me repeatedly to convince my good friend Aaron (ebay whore enthusiast) if he will sell her stuff for her. Now at first he considered it, but after we pondered a bit, we both realized that this is definitely something that she needs to do herself; a character building experience if you will.

This got me thinking about how one could make those firsts in life easier. There are things that help like having an older sibling or a friend that has done something give you tips or let you know what to expect. With so many things posted online these days, it's pretty easy to research stuff before you have to do it. But what about the things that aren't covered by these aids? Well after about 5 minutes of concentrated thought, I have decided that there shouldn't be a "safe" way all of the time. In fact I identified situations where I was nervous or unsure and paused for sometime to worry about it and that made it more thrilling, think of the slow ride up to the top of a roller coaster (worst part of the whole ride). Once I actually started in on my "first" it was more fun and more satisfying.

So while sometimes I may wish to be able to make someone more improved to save my ears, I have also decided that it may not always be a good thing to have a magic wand that I could wave and go Poof! skills.

Tails up tip

2006-10-12T17:52:00.000-05:00

I love to dance. Performing, social, club, whatever, I love it. What I would like to focus on tonight is social dancing. For those of you who don't have experience with this, social dancing in my dictionary is basically ballroom/latin/country dancing with either digital music or a live band. There are usually a lot of people of varying skill levels and it's a great time. There is also something called dance etiquette, and that folks, is the topic in question.

There are few things that can put a damper on my evening of dance. Being sick is one of them, a smokey is another, but the biggest thorn in my side is when people don't at least have some personal awareness of their actions. This may not be their fault or these poor souls may need some guidance, so I have a nice list of etiquette rules to help you continue dancing and making friends.

1. Freshen your breath.
Everyone gets cotton-mouthy after dancing for hours, so after you've eaten, if you smoke, if you've been dancing awhile, do your partner a favor and take a second to prevent them from holding their breath the whole dance.

2. Know your skill level.
I honestly love dancing with beginners. They tend to be timid and may step on my feet frequently, but how else are they going to learn, but by dancing? I honestly love dancing with experienced dancers. They can give me that yummy feeling that only some higher level moves can give. I honestly hate dancing with people who think they are at a much higher level than they are. Everyone makes mistakes and I, nor anyone else, am perfect, but just because you learned some cool move at a workshop, does NOT mean that you know how to lead it, and just because I didn't do what the dancer in you head was supposed to do does NOT mean that I didn't follow what you lead.

3. Do not teach your partner a new move on the dance floor during a social unless you are asked.
Maybe they don't want to do the sequence you learned with a flick because they don't want to look stupid like you do (ok that one was pretty harsh, but deal). If you lead something I don't know and I want to learn it, I will ask you. If I don't ask, don't do it again. Simple.

4. If you need to count the beats, count to yourself and make sure you're counting on time.
I understand that many people have a hard time counting music and learning to dance to it. What I don't understand is how saying the counts very loudly and blowing them into your partners face (even worse if you haven't followed tip #1) makes you dance on time. Maybe it helps you dance on your own personal beat, but most likely you're counting so loud that you can't hear the beat of the music you're counting to. Just keep the numbers to yourself. If you're lucky, the people in your head will help you out. You can also admit that you need some help and ask your partner for guidance. Use this if the people in your head are on break.

5. Keep the free styling to a minimum.
This is a hard one for most. You only know a few steps in the dance, but you have previous dance experience or just like to get your groove on, so you want to break into some freestyle when you run out of moves. Personally, unless I am good friends with you or am trying to help you feel less self confident, stick to the basics. I would much rather do a basic step the whole dance than have to fake enjoying you shimmy. Exception: merengue <--- do pretty much whatever the hell you want here.

6. Don't critique.
Unless you are paying a compliment after the song ends, keep your trap shut. This goes along with tip #3. Socials are for fun, not for being an ass. You may think you're helping, but in reality you are just less likely to get to dance with that person again.

7. Thank your partner.
Whether it was good or bad, you don't have to say, but you can gain points by simply thanking the person for the dance and not risk building a bad reputation.

8. Assume the worst at first.
If you're dancing with someone for the first time, assume that they are a beginner, or even better ask them what level they feel comfortable dancing. Then slowly add more difficult moves as you go along until you get an idea of what steps they can handle (<-- leaders. followers, you just follow). If you use this technique you'll never make a fool of yourself.

9. Learn to navigate.
Traffic can be as bad as L.A. so do your best to navigate even if it means doing more basic steps. This will mean less collisions and less bruises for the follower which makes for a happy follower.

10. Don't grope (leaders and followers).
Guys tend to be the offenders more often because they tend to have better access. Just remember guys, if you violate this too many times, you'll get an "accidental" bloody lip the next time the lady's elbow is free, and for me too many times is 1.5 and I have good aim.

There are a few other things that could be mentioned here, but if you can handle these ten you can pick up on the rest.

Poof! List

2006-09-25T21:15:00.000-05:00

This is the first of what will probably be a series of posts. I'm going to call it the Poof! Series. I have found that there are several things that should just happen to make life easier or more seamless and I will post them as they come to me.

One area I want improvement in is using lists. I have gotten better at keeping lists of things that I need and organizing them by store, but my problem is that I always forget to bring the list(s) with me. Not very useful... I either forget it at home when I leave, or don't even have it with me when I have time to run errands. We already have ways to create and manage lists efficiently and they can even be sent to our mobile units. So what more can I want? Smart lists! I want my mobile unit (phone, PDA, whatever) to be able to tell which store I just walked into and from that, bring up items from my list(s) that I can purchase there. What would be even better is if it could also display the prices of those items in the store or even the aisle it was located in!

How awesome would that be to walk into Target and have your phone display your list?

Paper towels $1.99 aisle 5
Toothpaste $2.49 aisle 9
lamp shade $2.99 aisle 21
puffs $1.99 aisle 5

(as you can tell, I would probably not be good on the Price is Right)

If it's doing this much already, why not have it sort the list by location so I don't have to go back to aisle five 20 times to get all of my paper products? Ooo I'm getting goosebumps!

As an incentive for the stores, maybe they could throw in related items that I might want to buy just like ads anywhere else we go nowadays.

In future revisions of this application of technology, I would like to see price comparisons done using the current store you are in and other stores that you frequent. This would be a great way to make buying essentials less tedious and Poof! have a useful list.

This post was brought to you by the Poof! Series.

OMB... you'll get it

2006-08-07T18:52:00.000-05:00

This takes iPod accessories to a whole new level. Oh the random stuff you find on the internet :)

Do you SIP?

2006-07-30T18:46:00.000-05:00

One of the topics that always tends to come up in work conversations is how much phone, internet, and cable providers charge for their services. I'm not a fan of paying a lot for these services, and phones are a big thorn in my side. Having had a particularly unpleasant experience with Qwest (MN) two years ago, I decided that I didn't need to even think about a land line until I moved into a more permanent dwelling, aka house. Right now I just use my cell phone for my limited amount of calls, but the problem is that my number is not local to where I live. Great for my parents, not for my friends and family who actually live near me. With this in mind, the only real benefit from getting a land line now is to be nice to other people and there is no way I'm going to pay a monthly bill to a phone company just to be nice; sorry guys.

So what has caught my eye? More and more VoIP services have sprung up as a great alternative to your standard phone options. You can get Vonage for about $20/mo which isn't too bad, but still not good enough for me to hop on. Skype also offers a pretty good deal for SkypeIn and SkypeOut is free which means you could choose to only pay a monthly fee for incoming calls made on land lines. A few of the concerns are that it's still only in beta and I haven't been super impressed by their computer to computer service, although not deterred by it either.

Today I read about the Gizmo project and this sounds promising. It does have a per minute charge of $0.01 cent for out going calls to land lines, but their incoming calls are a slightly cheaper than Skype if you pay for a year. The niceties include being able to call 60 different countries (Skype only does US and Canada), it's compatible with GoogleTalk, and it has this Area775 option. I've only looked into the 775 thing enough to know that I probably won't need it, but it seems like it could be useful for a small or home business. It allows you to be reached through your computer or "real" phone and can be switched (for a fee) during the call. You can also get a fax number and screen your calls, features that Skype is lacking as far as my minimal digging has shown.

While I don't intend to try any of these tools out right now, you can be sure that I'll be keeping my eye on them to see where they go.

Lego my Bluetooth

2006-05-02T21:39:00.000-05:00

Everyone's favorite lifelong toy LEGO has made a cool announcement. They have added Bluetooth for LEGO® MINDSTORMS® NXT! I would love to get my hands into this and play around. The little demo robot kind of looks like Number 5 which is also appealing :). I could use a sidekick don't you think? Oh the temptation!

Bringing Up Baby

2006-04-29T08:23:00.000-05:00

I found this link about taking your child to work while I was flipping through my Gmail random links. It isn't really what I expected, but I got to wondering how many people actually take their children to work, even for "Take your child to work day". I remember going a few times with my dad to work, and if I went with my mom, well I got to go down to our basement since she worked from home. It seemed more like and excuse for some kids to get out of school, but under the right circumstances, I think it could benefit older kids to see what their parents do and what working could be like.

I don't know if I would bring any of my (future) children to work with me, or if they would even be interested, but if others out there do, what do you do with them? Do you treat it like they're shadowing you doing your job? Do you use it as an excuse to not do work? Do they get to sit in your office or cube all day entertaining themselves? I almost think that "Take your child to work day" has been moved into middle school or high school where kids can job shadow someone for a day, but then it's more like "Send your child to someone else's work day". It seems like bringing your child to work may be frowned upon at most middle to large companies, but maybe some still see a benefit in it.

Resources

2006-04-27T20:15:00.000-05:00

The recent desk upgrade and interest in making large purchases (bike, MacBook Pro, house) spurred me to start keeping track of my finances in a way that I could forecast and see what I was spending money on each month. I have a copy of Microsoft Money so I chose to use that. So far it seems like a typical Microsoft product. It has a lot of features that I most likely will never use, the basic tools to input individual income and expenses are easy, but when you start to use the budgeting, forecasting, and reporting tools along with automatic downloads, glitches tend to happen. For example, I setup my online banking and credit accounts so Money can automatically download my statements each month. This worked well, and other than having my 'Payee' and 'Memo' fields flipped, I was pretty happy with the ease of the task. Then I started to set up my budget information including recurring bills and income. Then Money asked me if I wanted to have my taxes tracked to get an estimate for this years taxes. I thought, why not? It would be handy to know approximately how much I would have to pay or would get back. So I grabbed my latest pay stub, input my gross income, pre-tax deductions, taxes, and post-tax deductions, click and done. Then I go back to the main line item list and hover over my latest paycheck item... Click: would you like to add this as a recurring item? Um... I thought I just did, but sure I guess. Rinse and repeat. Go back to the budget page. What happened to my income (input twice already)? Geez I guess I have to do it again! Third time through the process. Now I go to the budget area and I have three recurring income items! Well isn't that special? Microsoft thought that I should be getting paid triple, what a tease. Once that got cleared up things moved a bit faster. One thing I did like in particular was that you can add financial goals to your budget and set dates for them. So I added in things like "bike", "house", and "Europe trip with Wendy and Brad" then I set dates ranging from now to three years from now.

I'm still sifting out which tools I want to really use and which ones are just fluff to me, but the ability to automatically download my statements shows much promise for continued use.

Hungry for travel

2006-04-27T19:21:00.000-05:00

About a month ago I got to go on an awesome trip to Europe courtesy of my mom. We traveled to Austria (Vienna and Salzburg) and the Czech Republic (Prague and Klatovy/Pilzen). There are a few things I don't like about traveling, mainly long flights and stupid American tourists, but even those downsides can't overshadow the thrill of getting lost in another culture and coming back to tell everyone about it. There are too many details to tell the whole trip here, but I can spare some highlights and some pictures. I can't say that I have one favorite place or event from this trip, but one of the most thrilling things for me is navigation. Just getting from place to place, finding travel options and blending in with "the locals". Give me a map and a list of places you want to see and I'm happy. Both Vienna and Prague were very easy to get around in. They had plenty of restaurants, history filled buildings, and "government buildings" according to my mom. If you're looking for hot European shopping, Vienna is most definitely NOT the place to go. With my mother in that city for 5 days, we found no good shopping areas and that is impressive. Prague however had tons of places if you're looking for either cheap touristy knick knacks or beautiful crystal or garnets.

An insightful thing to think about is how you deal with pictures while traveling. Are you the type that wants to take a picture of everything even if you don't know what it is, or won't remember what it was when you get home? Or are you the type that prefers to enjoy the moment and then hopes that someone else got a picture of where you were? I definitely fall into the latter until I get home and try describing the trip to people and have few visual aids. Then I wish I were more of the former. I was somewhat lucky in that the three other people I was traveling with on this trip all took pictures of everything, so eventually I could have pictures of everything times three.

In summary, I make a good, cheap tour guide... hire me for your next trip! Just make sure to hire someone else as a photographer.

Here are some pictures from this adventure:

Me and Amy in Grinzing, Austria with the Lamm sign

St. Stephans Church in Vienna

Charles Bridge seen from Prague Castle

Changing of the Prague Castle guard (in the pouring rain)

How I got my groove back

2006-04-27T19:03:00.000-05:00

I sit in front of a computer on a desk for work, so if I'm going to come home and do something on my computer I sure don't want a crappy little desk to greet me. The previous desk I used had barely enough surface space to put my monitor and keyboard on and had legs held on partially by the cardboard backing tacked onto them and the back of the top. I finally found a desk that would work well for my activities, computer and non, that didn't cost $200! I have plenty of room for my monitor, keyboard, mouse, picture frames, and open space for projects. I was so excited to have a desk I wanted to be at that I started using Microsoft Money to keep track of my finances (description in a future post), and once I finally have all of my odds and ends in their places, I'll be using the open desk area to frame one of my pictures from my trip to Europe (also in another post). As poor of an excuse as it may sound, my previous desk was a large factor in why I didn't use my home computer as often, and hence, haven't posted here for a long time.

For anyone who may be interested in purchasing the desk linked from this post, good luck. Because it was such a good deal through Staples, all resources have been exhausted. I got very lucky and found the last one from the second Staples store I tried and they are out of stock online. If you do find one, I highly recommend it.

If I scrunch up my cord and let go...

2006-04-27T18:30:00.000-05:00

a bunch of posts come out all at once. Let's skip the part where I admit that I suck for not posting in a long time. Weather does funny things to people. It can create allergy problems, it can lift peoples' spirits, and apparently it encourages some people to smoke more often and with large quantities of other smokers.

I have been riding the bus now for several months and there is only one building standing between the bus depot and where I work. I can either go through the entry way (great for cold days) or walk around the outside (great for enjoying the weather). During the cold months there would sometimes be one, maybe two, people shivering outside having a hit of nicotine by the door. Now that the weather has changed to favor more outside activities, smoking has become the popular outside activity for this building. What makes it worse for me is that not only is there a large quantity of smokers outside when I walk by, but both of my potential walking routes are blocked by at least three cloud sources. I also love the section of a conversation I overheard as I ran by the outside pack of polluters. Smoker A asked if Smoker B was ready to go in yet and Smoker B proudly responded, "No, I like to stay out here until the very last minute. I'm a chain smoker you know." Fantastic for you, and thank you so much for sharing bits your addiction with me. Why can't they have those smoking booths like in the airports for outside areas too? They can still get their hits and hang with their friends, but I wouldn't have to practice speed walking while holding my breath.

Help me Obi-Wan!

2006-02-20T19:48:00.000-06:00

I have been to several seminars, workshops, and training sessions in my short life and I've often wondered how much other people get out of going to them and why they go in the first place. My experience ranges from a few hours, or one day of learning, on up to 12 weeks and while I tend to remember going to the longer ranging sessions more easily, I don't always remember the material I learned from them. I've participated in these events because I've been given the opportunity, someone else has suggested it, I wanted to, and various other flavors of reasons.

Here are three that I remember the most:

My first memorable seminar experience was with the Dale Carnegie weekly training classes. I remember them being very good, but I was 16 and I have forgotten some of the finer details. I still think that we get dumber as we get older, so I probably understood much more about what we were practicing than I do now. Our sessions focused mostly on improving our understanding of point of view and how to improve our situations by knowing how to interact with people in a way that will lead to positive results. I think this is a fantastic use of knowledge and extremely enlightening when you look at a situation from a different perspective. You can start to understand why people do things that seem utterly stupid or illogical.

My next "top pick" was actually a class I took in college based on ToC, or Theory of Constraints. For those of you who like logic and are interested in some concrete guidelines on how to use it in everything from your kids to running a company, this would be a great source. It teaches how to "map" out problems and "break" them, how to help prevent problems by stepping through potential negative outcomes, and how to solve chronic, or recurring problems that have been around too long.

My most recent experience was with IMS, the Institute for Management Studies. This was only a one day seminar, but it still ranks high on my list. A lot of it's ranking may have to do with the recent time frame, but it still impressed me enough to be excited about going to another seminar through this group sometime. This particular seminar was called The Art of Listening, the Power of Speaking. Listening! Who would have thought that it could be so important. Sometimes it helps to just have someone clear away the clutter of everyday life and point out the obvious.

One thing that I can say from a personal point of view is that even if you don't remember everything from each workshop, seminar, or class you take, it still leaves an impression on you if you're willing to let it. Somehow it changes or shapes you and only those who pay close attention will notice it if you don't let them in on your secret.

If you happen to be interested in any of the three "helpers" I briefed about above I have books from all of them. I may have to dig a little for certain ones, but feel free to benefit from my library. Also, let me know why you have or have not gone to something similar before and how much you really get out of them.

Just Ride It

2006-01-16T21:36:00.000-06:00

Today I embarked on a mini adventure... riding via the public transportation system a.k.a. the bus! This post will function as both a story about my experience and some tips beyond what the website tells you.

Here begins my story: The closest bus stop listed to my apartment is about a 2-3 block walk, really not bad at all. The part about it that I wasn't excited about was that it's listed at the corner of two relatively busy streets for morning commuters. This would have been drastically less overwhelming if there had been a distinct sign that said "bus stop", however, there was nothing. I first thought that the stop might be further down away from the busy intersection, so I started walking hoping to find something, anything. Alas, there was nothing to comfort my worries that I would start the day pissing off the bus driver by waving him/her down at the wrong spot. Of course in my eagerness to not miss the bus I also arrived early to the stop which compounded my worries about the bus being late or completely skipping by my stop if it wasn't frequently used or called in ahead of time. As I later found out, the bus may be a FEW minutes late, but they don't skip stops.

At last! I saw my bus coming down the street that intersected the one I was standing on. Now my anxiety spiked, fearing that I would get passed for not being at the right pick up location or, even worse, getting yelled at! So I stuck out my arm as confidently as I could make it seem and to my great relief the bus's flashers came on and I was aboard. Now for the apologies... none needed! As I found out on the rest of my trip, the buses will stop pretty much anywhere they get flagged down within reason. In fact there were several people who were picked up nowhere near any bus sign that I could see. The driver was quite talkative and the ride was quite pleasant.

While on my trip downtown, there were only a maximum of 6 people on the bus at one time. I asked the driver if it was ever very busy and his response was that depending on the time of day, the buses that went to the mall and to Wal-mart were usually the busiest. The total trip took me about half an hour including time spent waiting at the invisible bus stop.

For the return trip I arrived a bit early again to purchase a 10-Ride Pass. This allows me to ride 10 times and doesn't expired. There is also a 31 day pass, but that would expire after 31 days. I boarded at the Transit Center or GTC. There were several people waiting for buses, but it was definitely not crowded. I had a different driver on the way home and there were a maximum of 4 passengers, including me, on the way back. If you would prefer to wait on the bus, make sure to go out right when it arrives in case the driver goes in side for a bit. Most people seemed to stay inside or on the "on deck" area to wait for the driver to come back.

The other perk that I found was getting dropped off. Whenever you want to get off you just press the "tape" shown in the picture to signal for a stop. The bus will then stop at the next intersection or wherever is most convenient. Overall my experience was positive and I think I'll continue to ride the bus downtown when I don't have other errands to run.

Below are some extras to help encourage you to try the bus:

1. If you don't have a pass, be sure to have a dollar bill or change ready when you get on the bus. You can't get change so make sure that you have exactly one dollar.
2. Sometimes public transit can be nerve racking especially if you don't know what to expect from the other people riding. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the people on my route were using the bus to get to work or school and most worked downtown including City Hall and the ARC. Everyone seemed to have a friendly relationship with the other riders and greeted each other as they got on.
3. I know the picture is fuzzy, but I saw this sign inside the bus. It advertises that you can get a free ride home on the bus if you show your receipt for $15 or more from Hy-Vee. If you're interested, take advantage of this!
4. Benefits! Not only does riding the bus help decrease the number of cars polluting, you don't have to worry about traffic, you can read, listen to music, or entertain yourself while riding, and you get the awesome experience of seeing life through interactions with and observations of the new people you meet.

I hope this long tale encourages you to try the bus at least once and helps calm concerns. Questions? Go for it.

New Year, New Life

2006-01-10T20:33:00.000-06:00

Aaron requested info about my first week of work. Well I could tell you, but I'd have to kill you :). To sum it up in a nutshell, I like work a lot more than school, which is good since I'll be working for a good chunk of my life. I enjoy having evenings and weekends instead of days that just blur together, and I can't help but gloat about how lucky I landed myself. The one main thing that I miss is the company. Now that I have free nights and weekends (that was for you Aaron), everyone except Jordan doesn't, or they are somewhere other than CR. The atmosphere is much different from my last four years, so it will probably take me a few weeks to adjust and find my groove again. In the mean time I will keep myself entertained by finding random things like my night-vision binoculars while sifting keepers from Goodwill donations. And just to clarify to the rest of the world who has not already asked me, no I will not be buying a new car or a house, however a new winter coat and possibly a MacBook Pro may be in my future...

Cleansing

2005-12-30T15:42:00.000-06:00

It's raining today as I'm sitting at Keith's computer out in Washington. This is actually the first day that it has rained past early morning which is unexpected and quite refreshing. I've been slowly learning my way around the area and that has been bugging me. Now is one of those times that I wish I had some sort of navigation/gps toy to visually gather my surroundings. I usually pick up directions quickly, but the roads out here are at the mercy of mountains and water so I have a hard time picking out if we're going north or northeast once I'm in the 'burbs. However, I have accepted the challenge and I think Keith and I will go out on an exploration sometime during my trip so that I can get lost and find myself again, one of my favorite things to do.

We've had a pretty busy week so far. Our first day in we met up with my friend Michelle who also happened to be out here visiting her boyfriend's family. We spent the day in downtown Seattle and went on an interesting tour of Seattle's underground that was reccomended by Ryan, Julie, and Josh. It was a great way to get some history and we timed it perfectly to meet Michelle's boyfriend for dinner at the Cheesecake Factory. Before our tour we made an attempt to find the famous Pike's Place Fish Market on a whim, but we failed because apparently Seattle has a large market area on Pike Pl. Alas, it was still fun exploring and looking at all of the fresh produce. Plus we found Kasala, this awesome furniture store with funky modern pieces.

The rest of the time we've been bumming around Redmond and getting Keith's crap unpacked and placed. Today we're actually heading out to purchase a kitchen table so he can stop eating on boxes. We also have yet to decide what we're going to do to celebrate the new year. Right now we're toying with the idea of driving up north to explore some of the cities and lack of cities. We shall see! Until the next post, don't forget to take your camera OUT of your suitcase before you go to a touristy event.

I just thought I would add these two pictures of our IKEA adventure...

DONE!

2005-12-08T16:17:00.000-06:00

If you don't like sap, skip to the next section...
I am finally done with everything college (undergraduate anyway), and the sky is even snowing to celebrate! I guess at points like this it's natural to reminisce a little, so I did a (very) brief look back and found it funny how the bad times tend to disappear and you start off only remembering the good ones. Maybe it's the adrenaline of being done and getting to rub it in everyone else's face, but either way I am happy to be graduating!

Next section
My roommate sent me this link from USA Today about how they can't find who the top 10 patent holders are in the US. It is quite entertaining not only why they can't find out, but also two potential top inventors in the US include a foreigner and a flower guy. It makes me proud to be in such a country...

Big Ad

2005-11-13T19:58:00.000-06:00

My roommate showed me this commercial for Carlton Draught. It's pretty awesome if you think about how much coordination it would have taken to produce. So why can't we have such awesome commercials? I remember a few that make me laugh like the cow commercial from Hardee's (drag the cow one to the viewing window) and this Pop Tart commercial from many years ago, but the really good ones seem to be few and far between. It could be that I just don't watch enough TV or maybe the channels that I do watch just don't ever have good commercials. If this is true, let me know where to look! I'm always up for a good laugh even if someone's trying to get me to buy something through it.

m-bear-ass-ing

2005-11-01T10:20:00.000-06:00

I guess this is my chance to clean out some of my old pictures that demonstrate moments in my college career. This gem on the left is me as a gangsta, aka let's see how many layers of clothing we can put on Samantha. You can't tell, but I actually had a pair of my jeans on, a pair of Keith's jeans on, some of Jon's sweatpants on, moccasins, my shirt and a pep band jersey and visor.

Down here we have me playing flag football freshman year. Our team, the Tangerine Speedos, never got a single point the entire season. That was our claim to fame I guess. I do have to say that although I'm not good at playing football, at one point I could actually throw the ball and make it spiral!

This last picture is the only Halloween themed photo that I could find handy. I don't know what I was supposed to be other than a red head wearing black, but my roommate made a pretty mean archangel! Oh that's also her up above in the picture on the left if you want to know what she looked like normally.

Lead me, don't tease me

2005-10-31T09:01:00.000-06:00

This past weekend was my last ballroom competition as a college student :( It was a pretty successful comp and I think that all of our new competitors had a great time. My highlights of the day included 3rd place in Tango and West Coast with Jill leading, 2nd in Waltz and Hustle with Bryan, and 1st in American Rumba with Bryan, Jack and Jill Waltz with #133, and Merengue with me leading Kathy!

I also got to drive one of the 15 passenger vans with Thomas as my co-pilot. We had the sweet setup shown below to pump our iPod music throughout the van. I love my Belkin TuneCast II FM transmitter and power adapter! There are a few cables to deal with, but once it's laid out in a good spot, there isn't a problem.

It's great for long rides because the power adapter takes care of the iPod and the transmitter, hence all of the cables. The transmitter does a great job with reception and you can choose from the whole spectrum of radio channels, so finding a free frequency is not a problem. Now I just need a new source for road trips.

Embrace your roots

2005-10-27T22:20:00.000-05:00

I don't remember all of the fun things for my Apple back in the day, but who could forget Number Munchers and Oregon Trail? Here is an awesome site that supplies good entertainment for several hours. I'm sure I'll at least use it to keep up on my math skills :)

Cheap lovers make expensive wives....

2005-10-26T17:37:00.000-05:00

I don't have any experience with this, so is it true, and if so, why? Does that make expensive lovers cheap wives, or is there no connection? Do they think because they were cheap before they can get more now that they are not just a lover?

This song came on today so I decided to post my internal question about this line so that I can get some input. But now for your visual enjoyment... a pretty:
Name the spot this photo was taken from and get 5 life points. I don't know what they accumulate for, but it could be fun.

Philosopher's World

2005-10-25T18:41:00.000-05:00

Have you ever felt like you have too much energy and potential to do really good things for people, but you're stuck? I've been feeling this way for a while and I relate it to chemistry (dorky I know, but deal!): When you learn about heat and molecules and how when you heat the molecules up, they move faster and faster... This is me only in a tiny box so that I keep smacking the sides over and over wanting to get out and do something. I've decided that after I get settled into my new home I'm going to try to get a little sister or brother. No, not biological, but one through Big Brothers, Big Sisters. I think this could be a fun way to channel my energy since I love kids and can hopefully make a positive difference in someone's life. I have actually been thinking about doing it since last summer, but I tend to do everything on the long-term, so only being able to dedicate a summer was not good enough. The downside to this solution is that I still have to exert patience, but in the meantime I can sit and ponder fun activities to do with my future "little". Any suggestions?

Tadoodle!

2005-10-13T22:53:00.000-05:00

I am now officially done with my half semester tech elective, w00t! My group gave our kickass presentation on Wednesday and I turned in my take home final today and now I just need the good ol' Dr. to give me my A and I'll be happy. This also means that I should theoretically have more time on my hands, but we should all know by now that when this rare event does happen, new activities manage to find their way into my path.

And now to throw a "you had to be there" moment in... My engineering meeting tonight was filled with fun jabs at random majors and my favorite run started with a ChemE stating that she could "do whatever she wanted" with her major, the counter attack from a CprE saying that he would hack her systems and make it backfire, so she then decided that she could blow him up. And it all ended with an Industrial Engineer saying that his major was great because it "isn't all guys" and an AgE saying that she loved her major because of all the guys. It was sad, but very entertaining.

I need a theme song...

Ok, I'll play too...

2005-10-07T16:12:00.000-05:00

Does my character looked tired or just scared?

I'm a big kid now

2005-10-05T15:17:00.000-05:00

I have made my big step toward the world after school; I accepted a job! I'll be working at Intermec with all of the cool people and living with my good friend Jordan again. Now that I have a job set up for myself, I wish I could transfer my other offers to people who are still waiting or at least help them more than by just listening to their worries. The Bobby Mcferin song doesn't seem to help much either...

In other news, everyone should go to the Frightmare Forest on October 15th and 22nd and pay for parking so Ballroom can earn some money! I will be doing the parking thing and NOT scaring because I'm such a chicken that I wouldn't be able to scare anyone else. So as long as you're not scaring me, happy haunting season!

Tom Sawyer for an evening

2005-09-25T11:35:00.000-05:00

I finally got to go kayaking this past Friday with Seatasea and it was fantastic! I loved every second of it and I don't want to wait until April for the next opportunity. Ryan has already blogged about this same trip that he went on in August, so I'll just add highlights from my experience.

I ended up trying out a Dirigo by Old Town and it suited me pretty well. I have never kayaked before this trip, so it took a little bit to get used to the paddle stroke that we were shown. It was very different from the dig and pull method used in canoing, but once I got going, my kayak was easy to maneuver. The current wasn't very strong, so if you wanted to go anywhere you HAD to paddle; no speed floating like you can in a canoe.

The whole trip was quite nice and the new people I met added to the excitement. There were two other girls about my age, but they pretty much stayed together, so I had fun paddling between everyone else and talking to new people. The river was just the right size to socialize with everyone or paddle off to one of the sides and explore by yourself.

One other tidbit is that Seatasea will be selling the boats that they use for these trips at a discount starting November 1st. One of the owners will be fixing any that have lost screws or various other wear and tear items before they sell them, so it could be a great opportunity to invest in a kayak... and then let me borrow it until I get my own!

Props

2005-09-24T17:24:00.000-05:00

Yay for ISU ballroom this year! I'm so proud :). We've now had 110 people in one beginner lesson and have been featured in the Des Moines Register, a Des Moines radio station, and in Visions, the ISU alumni magazine! It's like a fantastic epidemic of dancing, the only problem being that we're running out of space to hold everyone. Our Wednesday lessons have moved to one of the Forker gyms, and last week we had 4 rows of people on both the girls and guys side. It would be awesome if we could buy or build a building for us, but unfortunately we don't have that kind of money. Maybe the solution to that problem is to get a corporate sponsor! If only it were that easy... It would also be cool if we could create "virtual space" so we would always have enough room no matter how many people came. Maybe the people working with the C6 could give us a hand with this idea.

DINKs

2005-09-18T15:43:00.000-05:00

I can breathe clearly now! I think I'm back to life and I'm glad because I have a busy week coming up. It's E-Week and that means I get to promote ISU, promote myself, and dance at the end of the week!

This weekend was also busy and fantastic! My best (girl) friend, Wendy, and I have known each other for about 21 years now and no matter how far away we live or how long it has been since we last saw each other, we somehow manage to pick up right where we left off and have a great time. She came down Friday night and indulged me in a late night college dinner at Perkins while we caught up on a few things. Saturday we perused Main Street and found the new chocolate shop. Then we met up with Liz for pizza at Old Chicago, yes Ames actually has a new restaurant! After stuffing ourselves, we headed to C.Y. Stephens for an awesome performance of Miss Saigon. It was a pretty heavy story, but at least I didn't pass out like at Rent; stupid hospital stuff. To round the evening off we watched Napoleon Dynamite and Strictly Ballroom at Liz's and apparently Napoleon is much funnier with alcohol... Then I discovered that Liz's boyfriend plays Warcrack too so we geeked out a bit while Wendy and Liz probably sat and made fun of us. To end the night we introduced Wendy to Mitch. Oh Mitch you make my abs strong from laughter! There's a new exercise idea: aerobic laughter. It would be similar to the pole dancing and striptease lessons on the west coast.

One of my favorite new "terms" I picked up this weekend was DINKs: Dual Income No Kids. Leave it up to Wendy to use some fancy word to describe her and Brad's married life. Now I need to get in gear so I'm still sane by the end of the week. I wouldn't want to scare the other kayakers on Friday. And speaking of this, anyone who is going to be in CR, or even IC, Friday afternoon should let me know so I can say hi and keep myself out of trouble before I float down the river.

Squawk squawk, tastes like chicken

2005-09-12T15:47:00.000-05:00

Well it looks like the best bird won on Saturday! The Iowa/ISU game will probably be the only football game I make it to this year, but it definitely feels good to graduate after one more win against the dark side. And now that the game was so awesome, I have to say that the tailgating party was not as fun. I spent the majority of my time being a bouncer and a human body shield to prevent random people from snatching the food and drinks. Nothing too exciting happened besides being challenged to fight with some drunk guy from Iowa or UNI (he couldn't remember). I guess rushing the field was fun until we tried to leave the stadium, and yet again the goal posts stood strong against the people determined to topple them. It was worth the free ticket and $3 bottled water, but now it will be nothing more than a line on my resume of life... and something to brag about to all of the Iowa fans for the next year!

Warm Fuzzies

2005-09-09T11:47:00.000-05:00

Yay! I ran into one of my mentees from years back and he made my day. He said that Keith and I were his favorite TAs of all time! What a nice little ego boost. I also ran into the learning community lab instructor from my first and second years, so it was a nice little walk down memory lane. Now I just need to get a Beat Iowa shirt to wear tomorrow and have my advisor officially tell me that I can graduate, and my day will be complete. I'm also debating on getting another plant from the Horticulture Club's plant sale, but I don't know if that would be breaking my "no more plants until I graduate" deal with Keith or not...

Long time, no blog

2005-09-08T00:38:00.000-05:00

Ok, so in theory this will break the blog stalemate that has been going on, i.e. post something to entertain me! And as a warning, this is going to be a random blog to procrastinate going to bed. First of all, everyone needs to dig out their cardinal and gold this week to support the only game I half pay attention to. Yes, I am actually going to the ISU/Iowa match du football americain, but only because my brother is giving me his ticket. The best part about the football season is that I get to help out with the College of Engineering tailgate. Yay for schmoozing with awesome old people. Ok, so they aren't all old, but I haven't graduated yet, so I can still call them old.

Next... Jason, you were right. I do need you guys around to remind me when to drink water. I think random reminders throughout the day would be good so that I don't become dust, especially since I've been good and have kept to my goal of trying to bulk up and I have yet again that I do indeed need water :) So far the bulking is still not happening, but I think that McDonalds needs to play a bigger role in my routine for that to happen. I have, however, gotten back up to 450 crunchy stomach things and 30 push ups (yes army, not girlie) per week which is half way back to my old high school sports days. I don't think I'm quite to the ass kicking level, but I can safely say that I am more in shape than most of my major. I guess that's not saying much, but I can still smile about it.

Ok, last thing for the early morning. I finally saw Mr. and Mrs. Smith and while some of the fight scenes are cheesy, I thoroughly enjoyed it. I won't ruin it for anyone who hasn't seen it yet, but I think that Brad Pitt's last line is my favorite. Go watch it again if you don't remember!

Life is like a box of chocolates. Take little nibbles and if you don't like it, try something different. You're bound to find something you do like.

Yay for unique birth control!

2005-08-29T22:56:00.000-05:00

I can't describe it in words, just watch this WoW ad!

Quality Virtual Crap

2005-08-27T02:20:00.000-05:00

I definitely blame this idea on being up too late and watching QVC people try to sell tech stuff. Suddenly features that warrant dropping $1600 include a modem!, software: PeachTree, Nascar game, Acrobat Reader (wtf!?!?!), etc., and "lots of plug areas". Whoa buddy. The next item was some flat TV, I wasn't really paying attention because this idea popped into my head... I want TV "tiles". I want to be able to buy these tiles as I go so that I can start off with maybe 4 5x5 tiles and add to it as I get more money. They should be thin and be able to be hung on the wall. Connectors on all 4 sides similar to how waffle blocks used to mesh together could sense the edges because there would be no connection on one or two sides. Theoretically you could have an entire wall as your TV :). I would draw a picture now, but I'm going to make the last intelligent decision of the evening and go to bed!

Senti-Mental

2005-08-26T20:52:00.000-05:00

As I'm seeing the light at the end of the tunnel getting closer now that it's my last semester, I've already started getting nostalgic. While I was on campus yesterday I took some pictures of interesting things and favorite places that I've decided to share with the rest of the world.

This first one is outside of the Design building and either pleases or annoys me depending on the day. I don't really know why, but it is still interesting to look at.

This one is from inside the Design building and it's awesome up close! It's a full scale representation of DaVinci's flight invention thing. Some architecture students made it for a project. I want to see it in motion!

Ok, this is the last picture from Design. I was in there because the view from the roof is THE best, but unfortunately the access was locked. Maybe they don't want people jumping off since it's the first week or something. So because of that you have to deal with this picture of Science Row from the top floor. Look at all of the green! Love it!

Water is the next best thing to green, so here is a small picture of one of the water features outside of Howe Hall, the big Titanic looking building for Aerospace Enginerding, I mean Engineering :). Anyone have a big thing of bubbles...?

Moo U and proud of it! Where else would you see a cute kitty on campus next to horses and new ponies? No animals were harmed during the photo session, but this cat is very clingy. It wouldn't leave us alone last year when we would visit the horses and kept jumping into Keith's lap when he would bend down to pet it. It again brings up the debate between getting a cat or a dog... which do I want?

And now time to reveal my favorite place on campus! Since I'm leaving soon, I decided that I need to pass it on to others that have not already experienced this gem. To the normal eye this may just look like the steps up to Catt Hall, but the cool part is when you stand on the stairs. Depending on your height relative to me, if you sit or stand around the INVENT step and face toward central campus everything you say will be echoed back to you. This comes in handy if you feel the need to talk to yourself or would like an invisible audience, and it has entertained me since my freshman year when I discovered it.

Of course these are only a few of the things that make ISU great, but maybe it will bring attention to the details that you haven't noticed or show you things that weren't there the last time you visited. If it's the latter, get back and pay homage! You know you want to.

"God don't make lonely girls..."

2005-08-25T16:16:00.000-05:00

So the CD that the above song line belongs to made it into my player on the way to Ames and it reminded me how many of the songs I enjoy on there, even the radio played ones which tend to get on my nerves. But then again, I bought the CD back around middle school so the annoyances could be trumped by time. It also provided me the opportunity to post this picture of three of us in our apartment. I'll have to get an updated one with Katie sometime. Back the the music... I especially like Invisible City because his voice is hot on that track, and Josephine just because. Guess the CD and artist/group and you don't win anything but a time check of how old you are :). If you're The Cheat and look up the answer, it's ok, I won't tell.

On the school front: week one is done (oh yeah, no Friday class!). My most time intensive class looks like French and only one class presents the need and opportunity to multitask. This is good because then I will only feel like I could be doing something more productive twice a week instead of the usual twice each day. I am also proud to say that I have started on my workout attempt for the semester and so far it's going well. I'm going to make a formal plan on here so that I have to live up to my post and not just what is in my mind.

And now to make this post more interesting to you, here is the most awesome college apartment artwork ever! I know you're jealous...

Drool!

2005-08-18T17:08:00.000-05:00

So I went down to Des Moines today and test drove the Lexus RX400h the luxury utility vehicle (luv) hybrid... and I love the luv! It would take some getting used to because it's so quiet when it's just running on electricity and you don't get the familiar "start up" sound when you turn the key. But with all of the techy gadgets, including Bluetooth, that come standard and especially the fact that I didn't feel dwarfed inside of it along with its awesome handling in town and on the interstate, I'd say that it is highly likely that I will get one... eventually. Until then, I will just have to savor my test drive and save up my money. Oh and I'm now taking donations. Your benefit in the deal will be the opportunity to be a passenger when I finally get one! So who's first?

Oh how I love Firefox

2005-08-17T22:05:00.000-05:00

So even in general Firefox is awesome, but when connecting to the Iowa State University network, it's even better. If you happen to be an ISU student, listen up and I'll tell you how to by pass the crappy AIT (or whatever they're called now) software.

Background: When connecting the to ISU network and "NetReg-ing", AIT forces you to download their software to check if your system has virus protection on it. Good idea in theory when a couple of years ago naked computers were connected and spread viruses like wildfire during move in. But if you know that you have protection, it's a waste of time and if you run it for fun, it usually gives you the wrong information. Imagine that!

Solution:
1. Get Firefox. Get it before you come to ISU, install it from a CD, I don't care, just get it.
2. Open Firefox and type "about:config"
3. Right click and select New -> String
4. Name this string general.useragent.override click "Ok"
5. Type anything your heart desires for the string content, but be creative (AIT sucks, smacky the frog, etc.) and click "Ok"
6. Restart Firefox and NetReg! Voila, you can now bypass the crappiness that was.
7. Spread the news and enjoy.

Subliminal message: Play WoW

Just as a funny side note, the spell check suggested that NetReg should be neuters :)

Hook me up.

2005-08-08T17:08:00.000-05:00

Have you ever felt that you just needed an extra zap in the morning to get you going? Or maybe you're the type that forgets to charge the cell phone before heading out the door. Or even worse, you leave your charger at home while on vacation like I do. Well soon the wonderful Iowa State University will solve these, and other, problems for you. Right now research is being done on wearable solar cell technology.

I don't think I'll buy any of these techy items until they come out in a color that matches my eyes, but I'm definitely interested to see if this idea goes anywhere and what items, if any

Fly me to the moon...

2005-08-08T13:52:00.000-05:00

so I can mow the lawn! Check out this awesome video.

Talk about a reason to look forward to your grass growing, and you could even take care of your trees and bushes at the same time.

Don't try this anywhere but home

2005-08-03T19:10:00.000-05:00

So I have found the PennySaver good for two things so far: finding events to go to if I'm really desperate and making me laugh. The latter especially when my roommate is trying to figure out the acronyms in the personal adds. But today my humor was found in an ad for Muddy Waters which included some cheesy pick-up lines at the bottom. So for your personal enjoyment I am including them under the suggestion that you never actually try them unless you're already dating or married to your victim.

"You be my Dairy Queen and I'll be your Burger King. You treat me right, I'll do it your way."
"You must be an adverb, because you sure do modify me."
"I'm no Fred Flinstone, but I can make your BedRock."

Wow, those are some winners. There was a fourth, but I had heard it before and it's not all that funny. Anyway, enjoy at your own risk!

Epiphany!

2005-08-01T19:08:00.000-05:00

So I had a random theory occur to me as I was walking from work today... For some reason I was thinking about the fact that a lot of engineers and other science related people tend to act immaturely on occasion if not all of the time. I included myself in this statement, and then I began to ponder the reasons. I then reminded myself how I try not to forget what it's like to be a kid because kids are some of the most intelligent people I know. They haven't yet learned to think "realistically" and therefore are prone to more creative solutions and ideas. Then I put the two thoughts together and concluded that people who enjoy scientific fields are probably more in tune with their creative side which could be tied to still being a kid inside which leads to being immature at times. I have no proof, but I could be on to something here...

As an example provided by my roommate tonight, who happens to also be a computer engineer, he demonstrated how he can toss grapes in the air and catch them in his mouth and then we proceeded outside to see how high he could throw and catch them. Ahh, such fun.

I'm back!

2005-08-01T17:26:00.000-05:00

Back from Utah and completely pooped. I just spent 5 days dancing from morning until way past night and about 31 hours total driving through some of the good ol' USA's most boring states. Because I devoted an entire week to the BYU dance camp, I decided that I should at least give some of the highlights. First off, I was quite impressed by all of the instructors: Pierre Allaire and Mireille Veilleux, Jean Marc Genereux and France Mousseau, Hunter and Maria Johnson, and Ron Montez. I think Maria was my favorite instructor especially since my awesome boyfriend succeeded in surprising me with a private lesson with her for our waltz! (For those of you who don't know, this is particularly impressive because I have been able to sniff out all of his previous surprises.)

While the dancing and socializing was fun, there were some non-dance related things that I found interesting. Since the camp was hosted by BYU, we had to follow the university's rules including not showing our knees, shoulders, or drinking caffeine. I tried to follow these as well as I could out of respect, but I found that because I was told I could not do certain things, I wanted them more. For example, I'm not a big caffeine drinker at all, but once I was at BYU I suddenly craved the option for pop. Kinda weird how that works.

So to sum this blog up I thought I would ask a question. To people who have done ballroom dancing, do you remember what you thought it was before you started? And for people who have not done ballroom dancing (yet) what do you think it is? I have found that many people don't really know all that it encompasses.

Matrix style

2005-07-15T17:03:00.000-05:00

Here is one of my biggest problems that I would LOVE to have solved... shopping. I hate it. About every 6 months when I decided to give it a try again or get roped into an excursion, it always disappoints me. Now don't confuse shopping with buying. I'm all for the buying of new stuff anywhere from tech toys to clothes, but I absolutely hate the shopping part!

The process usually goes something like this... I decide that I need something, as a current example, a skirt to wear for the end performance at ballroom camp which has to work for both rumba AND waltz plus conform to BYU rules. So then I do some research and check out stores online to see if I can avoid searching by foot. This almost always fails me so I have to resort to the dreaded shopping. I get to drag my butt to stores, listen to high schoolers complain about their weight, and then I get frustrated because I know exactly what I want and nothing like it exists.

What I want is shopping like in the matrix. You know the scene where Neo and Trinity are going into the Matrix to save Morpheus and they need guns, lots of guns. All they have to do is say the word and wooooosh! rows and rows of guns fly past them. It could also be like that old car search commercial where the guy describes exactly what he wants and it whittles down the choices.

This might not satisfy the people who actually like going out and searching for hours to not find anything they want, but in my perfect world this would make my life even happier.

Big badda boom!

2005-07-09T15:01:00.000-05:00

Like blowing things up or at least watching? Well head on down to Ames on July 19th for the Knapp-Storms Implosion. That's right, they are finally tearing down part of Towers residence halls and you can watch in person, on TV, or on via a web cam. I say this is definitely worth a field trip including lunch at Hickory Park that has the best ice cream!

Row, row, row your boat

2005-07-09T14:34:00.000-05:00

So I was really excited about these Kayaking trips being sponsored by Indian Creek Nature Center and Seatasea, but apparently so was everyone else. As of Friday only 3 spots were left for the August 19th trip and I can't go then! Well my interest has been piqued enough that I'm going to look for other kayak or canoing opportunities, so if anyone knows about something like this going on in the Cedar Rapids area, please let me know.

On another note, my post office adventure ended in success and I got the chance to use one of their awesome stamp vending machines. One thing I didn't expect from the vending machine was that it would only take debit or credit cards. I suppose their cheapest stamp option was around $6, but the lack of a paper money option still surprised me. This could also be because I was tired at that point. A word to the wise next time you need stamps at 10pm, make sure you have plastic money with you, because only plastic makes it possible!

Bad compression idea

2005-07-04T00:14:00.000-05:00

So I guess the real reason that I decided to post was more to vent some frustrations and save people from hearing me groan. Being in engineering and computer engineering specifically I have run into the gender issue more times than I would have thought starting off. Now I hate complaining about it because I know it's something that I will just have to live with to some degree until I secretly take over the world someday. But until then, I have periodically been trying to think of helpful solutions. Some of the more boring and most likely unproductive ideas have included "manuals" and training sessions (only if they are held in Beems Auditorium, though). Then, in one of my "I don't want to have to deal with you" moments that combined with work I thought, why can't Bluetooth help me? Why can't there be some way for people to "discover" basic information about each other so that they don't make fools of themselves? Now I don't mean quite the a/s/l of chat rooms, but simple things like "taken, so f*** off", "not pregnant, just fat", or "vegetarian, so I don't go to Famous Dave's" (no, that is not why I don't like Dave's); you know, things that people end up sticking their feet in their mouths over. Then after thinking of this, I read an article that Ryan sent me with a Bluetooth enabled cell phone that had something similar. Now I'm not saying that everyone should have a cell phone to handle this, but if I had gotten some small device at college orientation that could do this for me, I would have a lot fewer people in the "awkward acquaintances" column today.

In other news, never try compressing the dancing area for a dance that would use a minimum size floor of 36x60 feet. It creates collisions, cramps, and a dizzy blur of confusion when confined to itty bitty spaces.

Rock on patriotic people, I'm going to bed.

So hi...

2005-07-03T17:11:00.000-05:00

Ryan convinced me to join in the fun so if you don't like my posts, blame him. Since I created this blog I have been trying to decide if I am going to introduce myself or not. I figure I will be nice and give you a little information to go off of, but it's up to you to find out more. To start of, I am a proud Iowa State student and I also happen to be a Computer Engineer. "Why?" you may ask. Well it all started with these little guys, Rug Warrior Pros, and then CELTS, my learning community. Besides computers I have a wide range of interests and unless it has anything to do with scary things or hospital related stuff I'll try almost anything once. Well this should be enough information for now. I will probably post again after I raid tonight.

Peace